Blair Braverman

No one will sell them one of those either.

So they're just like, you know what, we'll just go without those things.

And on September 16th, they reach Wrangell Island.

The island is just looming above them in the fog.

It's bare.

There are no trees.

There are these wide, wide gravel beaches, rocky bluffs, mountains all over.

The color comes from mosses and lichens and tiny flowers on the ground.

There's birds, there's scree fields, there's polar bears just wandering along the beach, kind of at all times.

It's just stark and big.

And they get off the ship, they stand on the beach, and the first thing they do is raise the British flag, which really pisses off the ship captain who dropped them off because he's American and he's like, oh, these dudes tricked me.

I would not have helped them colonize the island for Canada.

The ship, now pissed off, leaves, goes off into the distance, and now it's just them on the beach.

The first thing they do is take stock of all their supplies.

They need to build a shelter.

They need to figure out a plan for food.

The supply situation, once they're looking at all these boxes, once they're left on the island, they're discovering it's not as good as they thought it was when they left Nome.

A bunch of the food is rotten.

The potatoes are moldy.

Their prunes have maggots in them.